I generally dislike opinion pieces, mostly because I detest politics and that’s what most opinion pieces are about. But this story, more like a reporter’s notebook type thing, from LAT’s Joel Stein cracked me up. Apparently, as he was on a trip to interview some soft-core porn stars, a producer/director told him he needed someone and would he do it?

Shortly after arriving in the morning at the Palomino strip club and interviewing the show’s star, Amber Smith, I was approached by John Quinn, the show’s creator and executive producer. Quinn, clearly rattled, told me that the guy playing the role of “Chef” couldn’t make his flight from Los Angeles, and he offered me $450 to take his place. I felt just like Lana Turner at Schwab’s.

I asked Quinn how many lines Chef had, and he told me it was less than a page of dialogue. I told him I could handle that, and that I knew quite a lot about cooking. This didn’t seem to concern him. That’s when I asked whether there was any nudity in the part. That’s when Quinn looked at me like I was an idiot. “It’s an erotic film,” he said.

He told me that, like most soft-core performers, I could choose to wear a piece of nylon over my genitals. I was not exactly sure how that made the offer more enticing, but I thanked him. I asked what exactly I’d be doing. He said I’d be simulating sex ‚Äî basically everything besides, well, sex.

Stein’s first thought was of his wife and what she would think about the whole situation, but she essentially dared him to do it. The closer he got to actually doing it, the more misgivings he had, so he went ahead and asked someone else about it.

Still nervous, I called my friend, Josh Tyrangiel. He told me that, in this age of YouTube, I should definitely not do it. I explained that I had basically thrown away my journalism career when I took the $2,000 to interview Skinemax stars. Josh insisted I refrain. He referred to the potential footage as “my own personal macaca moment.”

Dejected, and stuck with the same frustrating honors-class conservatism that prevented me from having fun during my youth, I told Quinn I wasn’t going to play Chef. Quinn went ballistic. He offered to let me keep my underwear on. He told me I had misled him and put him in a bind. He said I was “good looking.” I was starting to understand how Vanessa Williams caved.

I love it. And in fact, you gotta wonder – if he had done it, what would the Times have thought? I’m not too sure how many of the LAT’s writers/reporters have moonlighted as soft-core porn actors.